yeah this clicked for me when i stopped obsessing over which model to use and focused on how i structure the context and feedback loops around it. for my project the same model went from "barely usable" to "legitimately helpful" just by changing how i fed it context and how i validated its output.

the user inclusion part is real too. the best results i get aren't from fully autonomous agents, they're from tight human-in-the-loop cycles where i'm steering in real time. the model does the heavy lifting, i do the architectural decisions and error correction. feels more like pair programming than automation.